Latest / St. Paul Podcast / Pass It On 6.14.26

Transcript

Pass It On 6.14.26 · St. Paul Podcast

• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: Hi everyone and welcome to the St.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: Paul Podcast.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: My name is Mark Neethammer, Senior Pastor at St.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: Paul Lutheran Church, located in Davenport, Iowa, part of the Greater Quad Cities area of Iowa and Illinois.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: Right here, each week, you will find beautiful music and a message of hope and good news to guide your life.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: I'm hopeful that this podcast can inspire you and help you on your journey of faith as you grow in love and trust in our God.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_03: Thanks for listening to our podcast today.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_03: It's a joy to be with you.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_03: Jesus spent most of his time out on the road.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_03: He'd go from town to town, and everywhere he went, he'd be surrounded by crowds of people.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_03: They wanted to hear him preach and teach.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_03: They hoped to be healed from their diseases.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_03: They longed to be forgiven.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_03: And as you will hear in just a moment, Jesus didn't see these crowds as a burden or a bother.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_03: He saw them as lost sheep of his flock, as beloved ones who were hurting.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_03: Jesus had compassion on them and responded to them by healing and forgiving and teaching, sharing about God's great vision of love for this world.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_03: And we hear today that Jesus didn't travel alone.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_03: He had a whole crew of men and women.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, there were women, although today we only hear about the twelve male disciples.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_03: Jesus had these friends called disciples who followed him.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_03: Their name, disciple, comes from the very same word from which we get the word discipline.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_03: They were taught, formed, shaped into walking in the way of Jesus, doing as Jesus did.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_03: They too came to know the compassion of Jesus, and having experienced that compassion, they carried it out into the world.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_03: So listen in about those disciples and about Jesus' deep well of compassion.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_03: We'll read from Matthew chapter 9, beginning with the 35th verse, and going until Matthew 10, verse 8.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_03: Then Jesus went about all the cities and villages teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and curing every disease and every sickness.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_03: When Jesus saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_03: And Jesus said to his disciples, The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_03: Therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_03: And Jesus summoned his twelve disciples and gave them authority over unclean spirits to cast them out and to cure every disease and every sickness.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_03: These are the names of the twelve apostles.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_03: First Simon, also known as Peter, and his brother Andrew, James, son of Zebedee, and his brother John, Philip and Bartholomew, Thomas and Matthew, the tax collector, James, son of Alphaeus and Thaddeus, Simon the zealot, and Judas Iscariot, the one who betrayed him.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_03: These twelve Jesus sent out with the following instructions do not take a road leading to the Gentiles, and do not enter a Samaritan town, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_03: As you go, proclaim the good news that the kingdom of heaven has come near.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_03: Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those with a skin disease, cast out the demons, that you received without payment, give without payment.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_03: This is the gospel of our Lord.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_03: And now listen in to some thoughts on this reading from Matthew.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_03: Well, Jesus has some big words, a big invitation for those friends.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_03: And as I was reading this uh story from the Gospel of Matthew, I was thinking about a friend of mine.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_03: She's a spiritual director, and she has this lovely and vibrant prayer life.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_03: Her journal is colorful, full of drawings and doodles that name to God all the stuff she has on her heart.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_03: She sometimes color codes her prayers where she writes them in her journal.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_03: There's green for her prayers of gratitude, and blue for intercessions, those prayers for others.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_03: She told me once how she has these sort of meditations, and one time she often prays when she's feeling overwhelmed or worried, and she imagines herself sort of cuddled up like a baby, held in the hands of God, warm and safe.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_03: So I talked to this friend of mine about prayer a lot, and she told me about how she finds that more than anything, prayer changes her, moves her to act.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_03: She talked about how for weeks she kept hearing statistics about hungry children in the news.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_03: She kept noticing people in her grocery store, how they were always trying to figure out the best way they could use their limited snap money.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_03: And so she kept praying and praying that God would do something about these hungry children, do something to change for the sake of these kids.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_03: And then one day, as she was praying, she realized that maybe God was attempting to encourage her to do something about it.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_03: That God was trying to respond through her, through her repeated and persistent prayers.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_03: And so her prayers led her to find others who were packing bags for children in their rural community, sending food home on the weekends when they didn't get their school lunch.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_03: You just never know how God is going to respond to your prayers.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_03: And I was thinking about her and about prayer because of our gospel reading today, where Jesus spent day after day responding to the needs of the people around him, healing the sick and curing disease and forgiving sin, offering hope as he teaches about the reign of God.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_03: And we read today that seeing the suffering of the people around him moved Jesus to compassion.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_03: He felt their pain and their struggle in his very being.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_03: The word for compassion in Greek, if you're curious, I'm sure you came to church thinking, hmm, I wonder what the Greek word for compassion is.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I'm going to tell it to you.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_03: And it's a great word.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_03: It's sblongnisomai.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_03: It's a great word, right?
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_03: Splognesomai.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_03: And that like splong word actually means your guts, your bowels.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_03: And so Jesus was literally moved in his stomach, in his guts.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_03: He felt their suffering in the very depth of himself.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_03: And in response to being so moved by the suffering of the people around him, Jesus asked his disciples to pray.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_03: He said, The harvest is plentiful, the laborers are few.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_03: So ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_03: I imagine those disciples feeling the very same heartbreak as Jesus, overwhelmed by the needs of the people around them, the suffering of the people they saw day after day.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_03: And so they prayed, asking God to send people to respond to the needs of the world.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_03: I imagine them praying, God, send these people.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_03: There's so much need.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_03: These people, send them now, and they have to be really good, super faithful, very capable.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_03: God, whoever they are, send them soon.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_03: They prayed, like we often do, that God would take care of all that's going on, that God would send some people to respond.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_03: And in some ways it reminds me a little bit about when there's dishes to be done at our house, and um one of my kids just says, nose goes and puts their finger on their nose, otherwise known as not it.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_03: Maybe you've played a similar version, where uh in our family you say nose goes, finger on your nose, and whoever's finger is on the nose last has to do the task.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_03: Have you played similar versions of this?
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_03: Well, now you can.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_03: Here's your instructions.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_03: So not it is another version.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_03: Whoever's nose is covered last has to go.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_03: Nose goes.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_03: So imagine these disciples hearing about these harvest harvests, this harvest and the laborers needed, that they slowly and quietly said, not it.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_03: Nose goes.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_03: It wouldn't be that they were afraid of the hard work.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_03: They after all worked hard in all of their lives.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_03: But having seen the scope of what was needed, having watched the miraculous ability of what Jesus could do, and not quite imagining that they of all people could possibly respond.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_03: I imagine they thought, God send somebody else, not me.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_03: And as they prayed that God would send some people to this harvest, as they nose gozed their response, Jesus looked at each one of them and said, It's you.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_03: You are the ones I'm sending.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_03: You, Peter and Andrew and Thomas and Judas.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_03: You are the ones that you have been waiting for.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_03: You are the ones that I am sending out into this harvest.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_03: You are the ones to bring healing and hope to the world.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_03: You are the ones to remind this world that it is deeply loved.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_03: I'm sure they doubted themselves.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_03: They were an odd bunch, after all, on their own and even more so together.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_03: In just that twelve, there were four fishermen, came from the most backwards of places.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_03: And what does a fisherman know about healing and teaching, after all?
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_03: And then there was Matthew, who was a tax collector, who once worked in the pocket of the corrupt and awful, oppressive Roman government, not liked by many.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_03: And right next to him would be sitting Simon, a zealot, who would have been part of this faction preparing to violently overthrow that very government for which Matthew had been working.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_03: And then Judas, of course.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_03: It was this strange bunch of people, unlikely to do much good on their own, and even more so together.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_03: How could that peep that bunch of people even get along?
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_03: Or what did they have in common?
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_03: What they had in common was Jesus.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_03: Jesus who saw in them something that they didn't see in themselves, who understood that they had the capacity within them to do incredible things.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_03: What they had in common was that Jesus not only chose them, but Jesus gave them power to respond to the heartbreak and pain and suffering of the world around them.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_03: Over and over and over again in Scripture, we hear how God hears the cries of the suffering of God's people.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_03: And God responds.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_03: God responds by sending people, each of them both completely unqualified and utterly right to do the task in front of them.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_03: God heard the cries of the Hebrew people when they were enslaved in Egypt and sent Moses, who had a stutter and doubted himself completely.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_03: When a giant soldier named Goliath uh threatened to stomp on the entire army, a young shepherd, armed only with a handful of stones, took him down.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_03: When the king listened to a greedy advisor and planned the genocide of the whole Jewish population, it was a young girl named Esther who bravely spoke up.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_03: Throughout time, God hears the cries of God's people and is moved with compassion in the depth of God's very being.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_03: And out of that compassion, God acts, not independently like a puppet here, but in and through people.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_03: But after a little nudging, a burning bush and the like, they eventually said yes.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_03: And they stepped forward, sometimes boldly, sometimes timidly, but boldly forward, as they were given this power of the Spirit, this energy from God.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_03: And God also gave them people, surrounded them with others, surprising and unexpected people, with whom they could carry that compassion and kindness and goodness into this world.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_03: But still, today, God hears the cries of God's people and responds with compassion through a whole unlikely bunch of us.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_03: Every week we come to this place with our hearts full of complicated things.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_03: We've got our joys and celebrations, reasons to give thanks to God.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_03: But we've also got our hearts hearts broken for ourselves, for this world.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_03: And so we pray together prayers that echo Jesus.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_03: Our hearts are broken.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_03: We pray, Lord, there's so much need in this world.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_03: Send some people to make it better.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_03: And I hope that as we pray together each week, that these are not nose-goes moments for you.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_03: Instead, I pray that the prayers we pray together will sink into your hearts like seeds.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_03: That your own tears will water those seeds.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_03: And what grows is compassion.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_03: So much compassion.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_03: Your own guts moved.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_03: Compassion ready to be shown to the world, ready to be shown in your family, in your neighborhood, among strangers.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_03: We, after all, are the ones that we have been praying for.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_03: And what makes it so amazing is that we don't have to all do it the same way, and we don't have to do it alone.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_03: Like those first twelve disciples, we are a beautifully diverse bunch, and thank God for that, because it means that we get to live out our compassion in all sorts of corners and communities and conversations, and together we have tremendous impact.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_03: And not just that, but we'll have the support and community and joy that comes when we do it this together.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_03: We have received compassion from God without payment, after all.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_03: And now we can give that compassion to the world.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_03: As we pray for the needs of others around us, we can abandon the whole not it.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_03: For us, it's one great shared yes.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_03: Yes to mercy, yes to kindness, yes to our neighbors, yes even to our enemies, yes to God's great invitation to love and compassion.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_03: Amen.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_01: Let's happy all day.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_03: Give us today our daily bread, forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_03: Save us from the time of trial, and deliver us from evil.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_03: For the kingdom, the power, and the glory are yours, now and forever.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_03: Amen.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_03: Dear ones, as people who have come to know the compassionate and merciful love of Jesus, it is now our turn to carry that compassion out into the world.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_03: So go, knowing the blessing and the goodness of our God, our Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer, who heals and holds you today and always.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_03: Amen.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_00: I hope you've enjoyed this podcast and thanks for your support of the ministries of St.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_00: Paul Lutheran Church.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_00: Our commitment to endeavors that lend hope to other people stretches across the country and around the world.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_00: We hope that in a good way you feel a part of that reach.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_00: Tune in next Thursday for another edition of the St.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_00: Paul Podcast.